I am a proud owner of a 1961 Hawk

[Indyted]

Greetings everyone,

After years of searching, I finally bought a Hawk.
One question I have involves the hood. The hood can occasionally detach from the latch and "fly up" and crash against the windshield. Very costly damage and repair!

I have heard that there are remedies included adding a chain underneath the hood to prevent this from happening.
Can someone point me to how this lis done or does someone in SDC land make those chain assemblies for Hawks?

Thanks in advance!

[Indyted]

Here is my Hawk by the way.

[blackhawk61]

Here You go ! very simple.

[Topper2011]

I installed a locking version of this on my Olds as I had to park out on the street and people regularly stole cars or broke into them. In fact, it was broken into and this was the only thing that stopped them from taking the whole car. My future wife's Mustang was stolen from in front of her house and involved in a high speed chase. They ditched that car with it still running and the jumper wire on the coil to solenoid (not unlike our Studes). Engine had a knock after that and sold it cheap afterwards. Figure they would come back for it another day.

[studegary]

Nice Hawk. It looks like Flamingo with white stripe.

[StudeRich]

I don't think so Gary, it's Correct Flamingo with a Bone (Beige) Stripe, VERY OFF-White!

[wdills]

Flamingo is hard to beat on a hawk.

[E. Davis]

That is how I did mine. Works like a charm and cheap and easy to do.

[BKE]

It's very surprising that that would ever happen, when you feel how heavy that hood plus grill is. Maybe some of these had a mechanism that lightened the lifted weight of the hood. I guess travelling at 130mph might go a ways to "lighten" the hood.

[ronpasquale]

Very nice Hawk. We had one just like it when I was growing up. It's the car I learned to drive on.

[unclemiltie]

I have had a 61 Hawk 4 speed for many years, second owner. I repainted Blaze red many years ago. Fun cars

[jwag]

Beautiful Car!

[bensherb]

If the hood latch is properly adjusted it's unlikely for the hood to become unlatched. With that said, it's very difficult after 60 years to get it correctly adjusted. Shortly after getting my Hawk I had the hood pop up to the safety catch twice. After spending the time to properly adjust the latch, it never happened again. I did however add a safety pin for peace of mind. I simply drilled the latch pin to accept a hitch pin. Now, even if the latch were to fail, there's nowhere for it to go.

[Jeffry Cassel]

The reason it can fly up is that the safety catch is only secured by a couple wimpy spot welds. When the catch fails, probably thru poor maintainance and incomplete latching, the hood pops up with a fair am't of force. It pops the secondary safety catch wimpy, rusty welds off and disaster happens. You guys may be over thinking this. What I've been doing is taking the latch off, cleaning it up really well, and then weld the safety catch securely. Lubriplate it and reinstall and adjust correctly. If that pointy thing in the gentleman
s left hand is screwed in too far, the hood latch will not fully engage, and can pop up when you get some air pressure under it. KISS